RE: [extremeperl] Better Development Tools for Perl

I looked at Test::Databaserow and it does not appear to be nearly as sophisticated as Java s DBUnit. I did a search for Test and Database and came up with

Message 1 of 107
, Jun 5, 2005

I looked at Test::Databaserow and it does not appear to be nearly as
sophisticated as Java's DBUnit. I did a search for Test and Database and
came up with Test::TempDatabase and that looks like it will help but it
still does not look as capable as java's DBUnit.

I was going to try calling Java's DBUnit from my perl code. What are other
folks doing about this problem? Are you using Perl modules or calling Java
from Perl for testing database related functionality?

Also, I love the green bar I get with GUI display's that are supplied by
Eclipse and JUnit's GUI. Is there any similar GUI display for Perl
programmers?

> In my opinion the development tools for Perl are *years* behind those
> available for other languages and the gap is now a serious problem.

I don't agree. I have several great text editors with debugger support
for Perl, so your argument boils down to a lack of testing and
refactoring support.

In my last job in a Java shop, no one wrote any unit tests at all.
Ever. On my last two Perl jobs, there was extensive use of unit testing.

The common tool is Test::More, along with useful additions like
Test::DatabaseRow and Test::WWW::Mechanize. Test::More is considerably
easier to use than JUnit. If you use something like Module::Starter to
stub your modules (or Catalyst for WWW projects), it generates basic
test stubs for you too.

The refactoring stuff is a more reasonable complaint, but are we all
going to curl up and die because we don't have a menu item for changing
a method name? Again, the Java people I've worked with tend not to know
or use this stuff, despite working on Eclipse variants (IBM's WebSphere
stuff).

In short, I think you're focused on the wrong things. The real danger
to Perl's future is the way the culture tends to encourage crazy hacks
like shoving methods into other module's symbol tables and AUTOLOAD
abuse. I would focus on getting people to make clean, readable code a
priority rather than spending lots of time automating refactoring.

Since there was a helpful discussion some time ago on USB keyboards and mice for pair programming that was not specific to perl, I wanted to solicit the group

Message 107 of 107
, Feb 13, 2006

Since there was a helpful discussion some time ago on USB keyboards and mice
for pair programming that was not specific to perl, I wanted to solicit the
group for information on network software (also not specific to perl).

I just set up openVPN on my openwrt/WRT54G router for pair programming with
a headset and skype.

(1) Can any point me to the documentation on sharing desktops on windows? I
need to create accounts on Win2003 XP Server. When I created an account
belonging only to the user group, my partner could not log in. He was
receiving some error message about not being permitted to log in
interactively. However, when I added the administrator group (reluctantly)
to his account, he could log in. Is there a tutorial somewhere on the web
for creating user accounts in windows for use with remote desktop logins on
VPNs?

(2) How do I share my remote desktop setting with a programming pair
partner?

(3) What about sharing sessions when I'm booted with linux? I think there is
a vnc program out there, but I don't know how to use it. I'll need to learn
how to create accounts and share linux desktops with remote VPN users. Is
there a tutorial on this?

(4) Are video cams very helpful for pair programming?

It seems that this kind of knowledge would be very common for pair
programmers.

Thanks,

Siegfried

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